Socialists trounced, Right on rise in French local polls

Anne Hidalgo was elected the new mayor of Paris, the one silver lining for François Hollande’s Socialist Party. Photo: AP
AFR

by
Emma-Kate Symons

Paris The President has no clothes. Even the left-wing press has joined in the condemnation of
François Hollande
and his threadbare economic policy after the Socialists’ historic defeat at local polls.

The keenly watched vote for mayors across France, paving the way for May’s European elections, was marked by a sharp rise in support for the extreme right Front National among disaffected former working class voters.

‘‘The king is from now on nude – he doesn’t have many voters any more, he still has not notched up any good economic results, and his parliamentary majority is ready to tear itself apart,’’ Libération newspaper said.

‘‘Unprecedented debacle", ‘‘punishment’’ and a ‘‘blue tsunami unleashed’’ (a reference to the colour of the victorious centre-right UMP and the navy blue colours of the far right FN) were some of the other headlines greeting France’s most unpopular head of state in the history of modern political polling.

The revitalised and remodelled FN, under
Marine Le Pen
’s leadership, benefited from its shift away from the free market towards an anti-globalisation, protectionist stance. Previously considered a fringe movement, owing to its traditional anti-immigrant outlook, it swept to victory in up to 15 cities, including former Socialist Party strongholds in the declining industrial towns Hénin-Beaumont and Béziers, on the French Mediterranean coast.

Ms Le Pen gloated over her party’s results, its best ever at the municipal level. She described its success as ‘‘a new stage for the Front National’’. ‘‘From now on we need to count on a third big political force in our country.’’

Voters abandon Socialists

Socialist voters, meanwhile, abstained in droves, with a record low turnout below 40 per cent. The exception to the Socialist gloom was Paris where
Anne Hidalgo
became the first female mayor of the capital. She ‘‘saved the Socialist honour’’ by roundly defeating
Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet
, the glamorous centre-right candidate and protégé of former president
Nicolas Sarkozy
.

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The opposition centre-right UMP claimed overall victory, after it wrested power in the former left-wing stamping grounds of Marseilles and Limoges.

Mr Hollande should not be surprised by either the election outcome or the deluge of criticism. Despite the mea culpas of his nervous Prime Minister
Jean-Marc Ayrault
, the President must shoulder much of the blame for the left’s drubbing, its worst score since the 1980s Mitterrand era.

The week before the second round of the municipal ballot, unemployment edged up again beyond 10 per cent. On Monday the government will be forced to announce it cannot hold to deficit- reduction targets it signed up for last year. The President has failed in the two years since his election to pursue vital structural reforms, preferring to raise taxes on the rich and the middle classes.

He is under intense internal party pressure to veer hard left again in economic terms, abandon his “responsibility pact’’ aimed at cutting the deficit and reducing red tape on business, sack his uncharismatic prime minister and reshuffle his flailing government. Interior Minister Manuel Valls and Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius are being mentioned as likely successors.

But Mr Hollande, ever the timid conservative of the Socialist variety, knows a reshuffle will only be a temporary way of distracting voters from the abysmal state of the French economy.

The political earthquake confirms the French left is dead at the national level outside of Paris thanks to its backward industry and general economic policies, and its inability to tackle long-term unemployment and a rigid labour market. – even if the opposition centre-right did little over its decades in power under Jacques Chirac and Sarkozy to stop the rot.The local election debacle lays the way for a three-way presidential race in 2017 with the National Front in much better shape to try to win presidency for the first time.

This may be Marine Le Pen’s finest moment since she became leader of her party in 2011, but Hollande only has himself to blame.